Thursday, March 7, 2013

Paschal scandal (up to date)

The head of communications for the
troubled Italian bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena died late Wednesday in what the
police say appears to have been a suicide.

His death adds an element of
tragedy to a scandal that has had a devastating effect on the community of
Siena, reverberated throughout European banking and played a role in Italy’s
recent political shake-up.

David Rossi, 51, was found dead
Wednesday evening on a street under his office window at the bank’s
headquarters in Siena, a local police official said Thursday. An employee of
the bank found Mr. Rossi’s office window open and called an ambulance, but Mr.
Rossi was already dead when emergency service workers arrived.

The police found several notes
crushed in Mr. Rossi’s trash basket that magistrates seized for analysis, but
said there was not yet an explanation for his death.

Young, healthy, a husband and a father, with everything to live for -- and they want us
to believe this was suicide.

Some will here detect the fine hand of the Mafia.Others (better informed), of the Masons.

But those in the know will nod their heads
imperceptibly.This case bears all
the earmarks of … The Riemann Conspiracy.

~~~~~~ [Here follows our postfrom last Lent] ~~~~~~

“Since when did a locked door ever stop Nick Carter?”

-- old radio play

The following photograph has been making wide waves on the Web:

The tell-tale reflection in the polished tabletop is a dead giveaway that the writstwatch has been photoshopped off rather than on.

Now, the Illuminati
have been giving this an interesting spin, claiming that the watch cost
$30,000 (how would they know that?) and that its existence is evidence
of ecclesiastical luxuria,
and that the image was ‘shopped off so that the starving peasants would
not realize how high on the hog their prelate lives (although you can
pretty much guess from the rest of the way he is dressed, that he isn’t
reduced to wearing a barrel). Such a tale may easily find credence
among the peasantry.

But -- just as with the case of the Reddit commentor suposedly snagging a movie deal based upon a few pathetic sci-fi posts -- the story immediately falls apart upon examination.

First
of all, actual Christians know full well that ostention is outwardly,
humility is inward. Time and again it has been found that, when
someone destined for sainthood died magnificently robed, he was
discovered to be wearing, hidden beneath the wordly raiments… a hair
shirt. So, what is really the deal here?

Look
closely at that watch… Zoom in … Use your “24”-style Chloe-matic ®
Image Resolution (Home Edition)… See what I mean? $30,000 ? Not on
your Nelly! It’s a twenty-dollar knockoff the Patriarch picked up in
Times Square after seeing a show. It is not for that that he was assassinated.

But -- what then? you stammer, now truly at a loss.

Just as with the hair shirt, the key to the mystery lies … within ….

For,
hidden inside the casing of that unassuming timepiece was the sole copy (on microfilm) of an
exclusive New Proof of the truth of Orthodoxy. It had not yet been
published because the details were still being vetting by the
bishopric’s algebraic geometers. And now it’s … g-g-gone. Destroyed, or hidden in the vault of ... Mr. Big ???

The
mystery only deepens when we learn that, at the time of the purloining
of the watch, the patriarch himself had been sitting in a locked room.

This latest outrage has all the earmarks of that litany of crime, known to historians as…

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About the Author

David Justice studied French at the Sorbonne, mathematics and physics at Harvard and MIT, and math and linguistics at Berkeley.He is the author of The Semantics of Form in Arabic, in the Mirror of European Languages; and of the fictional worksI Don’t Do Divorce Cases (which includes stories originally published in Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine) and Murphy on the Mount. He taught French at Berkeley, and linguistics at the University of Alberta, then worked at Merriam-Webster as Editor of Etymology (where he edited Webster’s Book of Word Histories) and as Editor of Pronunciation.He subsequently was editor-in-chief at Franklin Electronic Publishers.He is currently employed as a language analyst, and consultant for the University of Maryland. He lives with his bride of forty years, overlooking a peaceful lake.